We checked out of Iron Blossom on Saturday and spent about an hour around Temple Square in SLC.
The Salt Lake Temple is undergoing major renovation and seismic retrofitting, which began in 2019 and is projected to be completed in 2026. The temple will need to be re-consecrated, and it will be about 6 months before full tours will be available, as I did at Draper in 2009.
We had a late lunch at Red Iguana (still a decent dining spot) and then headed to Logan for the night. From there it’s still a 40-minute drive to Beaver Mount, which is close to the pass between Logan and Bear Lake. The altitude range is 7,200-8,800 feet and the exposure is about 2/3 east and 1/3 north. Liz’s window ticket was $70 while I used my Indy Pass.
It was already half past ten when we started skiing. If facing north there was still winter snow on the upper half of the vertical. Probably half the mountain was in spring transition mode on this first big warmup day with afternoon temperatures in the 40s. Some of the low lying and straight to the east had already melted/frozen.
The terrain was quite extensive, and almost all of the groomers were in good condition throughout the day with modest skier density, similar to Powder Mt. the following day. On our second race we saw ski patrol training.
After two groomers we entered beaver powder, which starts in these aspen glades.
It opens in the middle part.
The evergreen forest below had melted/frozen so we went to Teddy’s Frolic.
We headed over to Marz Triple, where most of the groomers’ sections were in prime corn mode in the afternoon. Here is the Rodeo Grounds Terrain Park.
After 5 runs on the marz we went to rest and have a bowl of soup. The locker room below probably boasts the most diverse collection of stickers from a ski area that I have ever seen.
And of course the risky ones:
I recently heard about Beaver Mount from PowderChaser Steve, of all people. Steve aims to create first chair long vertical fresh tracks with favorite areas such as Snowbird, Crystal, Palisades and Jackson. He recently consulted with me about his plans to chase the April 8 total solar eclipse in Texas. He recently mentioned Beaver’s scoring of sustained full verticals in the sidecountry with easy traverses to the base (note that Steve is a snowboarder!). According to the topography that should be the southern border, look like this from above Harry’s Dream chair:
There was no way for us to get out of there under the current conditions, but we decided to follow the skier packed lines inside the range.
Even within the range it is excellent terrain for fresh snow on mostly spaced trees. We never saw signs for Canyon View or Robinson Rim Run, but I don’t think they are well defined. About 2/3 of the way down the open lines went into shadow, so we veered left to avoid potential trouble.
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We found a sunny spot for the final pitch.
We scored a few more runs in the soft bumps. Liz got her Easterner’s mogul fix here in Upper Teddy’s.
Same was the case with Lee.
During my last chair ride I saw a snowboarder for the first time: a snowboarder with his child on a leash, also on a snowboard.
I finished with 20,800 verticals at 4pm.
Overall I would rate Beaver Mount very similarly to Pebble Creek, which we skied the same Sunday after Iron Blossom week a year ago. But today was more thorough exploration because I was coming down with COVID a year ago and only did a half day of skiing. Pebble is a little more intense but Beaver is more detailed. Pebble has sidecountry on both sides while Beaver is practical on only one side.
Beaver is more remote than Pebble Creek. Utah State University is in Logan, but Beaver is a serious scholar from elsewhere. While in Temple Square we learned that the Salt Lake Temple is the fourth oldest temple in Utah. One of the old ones is in Logan.
The fence/gate was locked and the parking lot was empty, which was surprising at 5pm on a Sunday.
Then we went to Eden, went to our Wolf Creek condo room, changed and went to the Shooting Star Salon in Huntsville for dinner. We arrived at 7:15 pm, three hours after leaving Beaver Mount.
